PowerBook Central: Tales from the Dark Side

Flipping through Sunday's newpaper, I noticed Best Buy's circular. I normally semi-ignore Best Buy ads, but this time something caught my eye. Right there on the front page was an ad for a $99.99 desktop PC. Wow, computers have finally dipped below the magic $100 mark? The PC was marked below $100 after a bunch of rebates and without a monitor, but still, that's pretty impressive. For $99.99 you get:

400MHz with 128K L2 cache
32MB RAM and a 4.3GB hard drive
32X CD-ROM drive
56k V.90 modem
4MB VRAM

Another $115 got you a 15" monitor. Now granted, the machine is low on memory and L2 cache, but everything else seems reasonable for the average user. The catch? You have to sign up for 3 years of Prodigy internet service. Is this the future of low-end PC's? Get a free, or nearly so, machine with a commitment to some type of internet service? Most people who buy a computer these days do so with the intention of getting online, so this type of purchase might make sense.

If Apple introduces its own online service at MacWorld this week, as rumored, will they follow suit? Should Apple be offering real cheap Macs with some type of service commitment? How else can they stay competitive?

Care to contribute to this discussion?

Editorial Index

Stephen Hildreth has been the Editor-in-Chief of PowerBook Central since its inception in 1996. When not working on his Mac, he shares his love of the outdoors with his family and can be found biking, snow skiing, or educating students on the internal & external processes of our planet.